Author: Jane Parmel

Mind Your Own Business!

The concept of minding your own business implies that while you are grinding away at your day job you need to invest and work towards your future financial independence. Pretty soon you’ll be able to walk away from your day job and mind your own business full-time.  The best way to do this is through the acquisition of real estate.

Let’s take a quick look at where you are losing all your money: taxes. Taxes have existed since 1913 in the U.S. (earlier in England). While the original intention was to only tax the wealthiest of the population, obviously over the years that has trickled down to the masses, including those in poverty over the years.

Keep in mind that the more money you make, the more taxes you pay. The wealthy know a way to get around this is to form a corporation. Corporations offer tax benefits and protect you from lawsuits. If you want to learn more about this, contact me or your attorney for additional information.

We’ve all heard the golden rule of “Pay Yourself First”, but many of us don’t do that. Until you learn and put this rule into practice, you don’t have a chance of building any real wealth and getting out of the rat race. Adhering to this rule forces you to generate more income to pay your expenses.

There are some key areas of finance you should be familiar with and taking courses is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Here are the basics you need to know:

Accounting

It pays to know how to read financial statements. When acquiring businesses or assets, you need to quickly identify the financial standing of the company you are acquiring.

Many adults do not know how to read or balance a balance sheet. This is an extremely beneficial skill to have and will pay off in the long run for you and your business.

Investment Strategy

This skill will sharpen over time with experience. Reach out to investors and observe how they play the game.

Market Behavior

Know the laws of Supply and Demand. No business owner can succeed without understanding these basic principles of the market. Bill Gates identified a gap for people. Always be searching for opportunities. Look at what sells and who buys.

Law

Do everything you can to grow your business within legal boundaries. Know your corporate, state, and accounting laws.

Once you are familiar with these areas of finances you will be in a good position to use them to help build wealth. The rich practically invent money. You have to know where to find a great deal. Let’s continue with real estate. Look for houses in trouble or find the court in your area that handles foreclosed, police impounded, or other real estate situations. You can either renovate and sell or rent for residual income.

Essentially there are two main types of investors:

  1. Those who buy pre-packaged investments;
  2. Those who create their own investments.

You can guess which ones are the most successful. To be one of these people you need to know what to look for and how to respond. You must:

  1. Find a good deal other people have overlooked;
  2. Raise the capital required for the transaction;
  3. Put together a high-performing team to execute the plan.

There is risk involved in every acquisition. The goal is not to avoid the risk, but to respond appropriately to the risk with confidence and a steady hand.

If you need help identifying potential money-makers, where to get the capital you need and how to put together a smart team, please contact me today for guidance.

Get Out of the Rat Race

We’ve all had jobs we despised. We were underpaid, underappreciated, and bored out of our minds. We either quit these jobs or were fired for poor performance because we just checked out. Instead of falling into that trap, you need to consider every job an opportunity to learn something new that you will apply down the road to find success.

When you give people the tools they need to develop extraordinary solutions, you enhance their lives for the future. You need to take this approach with your business. What if one of your terrible jobs had been one with no pay and you needed to devise some ingenious ways of making money? I bet you could have found a diamond in that rough. This idea can also be used in your own company.

I don’t recommend going into your next meeting and advising your employees that no one will be paid anymore, but you can tell them that their potential raises, bonuses and other perks are now commensurate with their creativity to enhance the business.

Let’s reflect on a great concept called financial literacy. This certainly isn’t something that was taught in school but is still an essential skill. So what is financial literacy?

The “old school” way teaches people to be good employees, not employers. This mindset will never offer you wealth. You need to focus on becoming a good employer.  Not only do you need to learn how to acquire wealth, but also how to sustain wealth for generations. This is what financial literacy is all about.

So how do you get out of the rat race and start working towards a future building wealth? You need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability. If you take a look at your own life you’ll probably find the following:

Assets

  • Real Estate
  • Stocks
  • Bonds
  • Intellectual Property

Liabilities

  • Mortgage
  • Consumer Loans
  • Credit Cards

You’ve probably been conditioned into thinking things like your house, car and entertainment system are assets, which isn’t true. Assets should be working to MAKE you money. When you continue to struggle, you are not building wealth. If your primary income is derived from wages and each time your wage increases you pay more taxes, you are not really creating wealth, are you?

So if buying a house isn’t an asset (and it’s not, because you spend about 30 years of your life paying it off), then what is? Here are some of the best assets to acquire and when you can actually start to see wealth being created as a result:

Average time of holding onto an asset before selling it for a higher value:

1 year

  • Stocks (Startups and small companies are good investments)
  • Bonds
  • Mutual funds

7 years

  • Real estate
  • Notes (IOUs)
  • Royalties on intellectual property
  • Valuables that produce income or appreciate

So here are the steps to getting out of the rat race and onto your journey of building wealth:

  1. Understand the difference between an asset and a liability;
  2. Concentrate your efforts on buying income-earning assets;
  3. Focus on keeping liabilities and expenses at a minimum;
  4. Mind your own business.

If you need help getting out of the poor way of thinking and into a mindset that focuses on building wealth, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me for guidance.

Next time we will discuss how to mind your own business to keep your eye on the prize.

 

Prepare for Lift Off!

Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word-of-mouth program work for you. Hopefully, you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word-of-mouth campaign.

We will wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word-of-mouth campaign.

Now, let’s take a look at those steps:

  1. Seed the market. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
  2. Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
  3. Offers lots of testimonials and other resources.
  4. Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort and monthly by teleconference.
  5. Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have all been successful with this approach.
  6. Develop clips on your website featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers.
  7. Hold seminars and workshops.
  8. Create a club with membership benefits.
  9. Pass out flyers.
  10. Tell friends.
  11. Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
  12. Put the Internet to work.
  13. Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
  14. Empower employees to go the extra mile.
  15. Encourage networking and brainstorming ideas.
  16. Run special sales.
  17. Encourage referrals with the use of a strong referral program.
  18. Use a script to tell people exactly what to say in their word-of-mouth communication.

These are all fantastic ways to get the word out about your products and services and start a word-of-mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word-of-mouth campaign into the world, you need to go through the checklist to ensure you’ve covered all the essentials.

Here’s your word-of-mouth campaign checklist:

  1. Are all of your communications sending the same simple message? If it can’t survive word of mouth, it’s not a compelling story.
  2. Is your product positioned as part of a category? Ex.”A dandruff shampoo that doesn’t dry your hair.”
  3. Are your examples outrageous enough to be shared?
  4. Do you enhance your materials with success stories from real people?
  5. Are you using experts effectively and in an objective manner?
  6. Have you created mechanisms so people can follow up on the word of mouth they hear and simple ways of inquiring or ordering?
  7. Have you made the decision process easy for customers?
  8. Have you created events and mechanisms so that your prospects hear about your product once a year, and it is easier to try or buy?

These are all essential elements to remember when taking a second or even third check over your word-of-mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.

Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, try our FREE test drive to gain access to the best resources, tools and business coaches you can find.

Put it to Work!

In the last post, we discussed how to conduct word-of-mouth research and then put that research to work. Today we’ll give you some great tried and true ways to use word of mouth when building and executing your campaign.

We’ve done it in a list form, so you can go through and highlight the ones you want to put into action. George Silverman offers these, which you can find in his amazing book The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing.

Here they are:

  • Give them something worth talking about
  • Cater to your initial customers shamelessly
  • Give them incentives to engage in word of mouth
  • Ask them to tell their friends
  • The customer is always right
  • Always tell the truth
  • Surprise the customers by giving them a little more than they expected
  • Give them a reason to buy, make them come back and refuse service from anyone else other than you
  • Make eye contact, and smile, even through the telephone
  • Find ways to make doing business with you a little better: a warmer greeting, a cleaner floor, nicer lighting, a better shopping bag, extra matches, faster service, free delivery, lower prices, more selection.
  • Never be annoyed when a customer asks you to change a large bill even if he doesn’t buy anything.
  • The customer is your reason for being. Never take her for granted. If you do, she will never return and go straight to your competition.
  • Always dust off items, but never let the customer see you doing it.
  • Never embarrass a customer, especially by making him feel ignorant.
  • Never answer a question coming from a desire to show how smart you are. Answer with a desire to help the customer make the best decision.
  • Never shout across the store, “How much are these condoms?” or anything about the personal items a customer buys.
  • When you don’t know, say so. Do whatever you can to find out the answer.
  • Every customer is special. Try to remember their names.
  • Don’t allow known shoplifters into the store.
  • Don’t ever let two sales staff talk when a customer is waiting. The worst thing you can do is count your cash while a customer is waiting.
  • If you can suggest something better, they will be grateful. Always respect their choice.
  • Never pressure anyone into buying anything.
  • Never knowingly give bad advice. Just help people come to the right decision.
  • Personally visit the store of the competition or assign people to visit and report back to you.
  • Hire a shopping service to prepare periodic reports on how your people treat your customers.
  • If you hear of a store where the management insults the customers, buy it, and put the sign “Under New Management” outside. Then sell it later based on the increased sales.
  • One expert (in the drugstore’s case, a nurse or physician) who is convinced you are better brings hundreds of customers and their friends through word of mouth.
  • Always look for ways to make a stranger a customer.
  • People will walk several blocks to save a dollar, or see a smile, or be treated right.
  • Always run a sale promotion or an offbeat event. Make them come back to see what you are cooking up next.
  • Use the best sign-maker you can find and pay him more than anybody else.
  • If someone is mad at you, they will tell everyone who will listen for as long as they are angry, maybe even longer. So correct any dissatisfaction, and ask customers to send their friends.
  • Treat your employees and salespeople who sell to you the same way you treat your customers.
  • Have a zero-error system. For example, there may be terrible consequences if a mistake is made in filling a prescription. Have people check each other’s work for safety.
  • Occasionally make intentional mistakes to see if people are checking.
  • Always measure your performance.
  • Always ask a customer to “come back soon”
  • If customers say they are moving away, offer to send them their favorite items by mail.
  • Tell jokes.

 

I know this is a lot of information to digest so we’re going to wrap up this lesson and leave you with the homework of going through and looking at the tips and tricks you like best. Also, look for tips that fit your company, products, and services, and target customers effectively.

If you need help with this process, try our FREE test drive and get all the help you need from our experienced business coaches.

Search & Implement

People only remember the extraordinary, strange, wild, surprising and unusual. You need to make sure your ideas and marketing reflect these reactions. This doesn’t mean you have to have a product or service that is entirely out of the norm, in fact, this could quickly drive customers away. You need to have a product or service that is high quality and readily marketable, then you need to market it as extraordinary and new.

As you research word of mouth, there are some questions you need to ask along the way:

What are the users willing to tell the non-users?

  • Exactly how do your customers describe your product?
  • What are the non-users willing to ask the users?
  • What are the things they need to know, but are unwilling to ask?
  • What happens when these issues are raised?
  • Precisely what do your prospects have to know to trigger purchase?
  • Exactly how do your customers answer your prospects’ objections, concerns, and qualms?
  • How do your customers persuade their friends to use your product?
  • How do your customers suggest they initially get to know or try your product?
  • What warnings, safeguards, tips, and suggestions do your customers suggest to your prospects?
  • Are your sales messages, positioning, and important facts about your product getting through and surviving word of mouth?
  • What messages do you need to inject into the marketplace to turn the tide in your favor and how will you deliver them?

There are two main reasons why word-of-mouth research is so important:

  1. To get a real impression and feedback from customers
  2. To define word of mouth itself and the concept it creates

A simple formula can help you conduct your word-of-mouth research. It’s called the “2-2-2” model.

2-2-2- Model

What this breaks down to is:

  • 2 groups of customers
  • 2 focus groups of prospects
  • 2 mixed groups (enthusiasts & skeptics)

In these groups you need to ask the following questions:

  1. What would you tell a friend?
  2. How would you persuade a skeptic?
  3. What questions would you anticipate from a skeptic?
  4. How would you answer their objections?

The best way to conduct these groups is by teleconference. This ensures you’ll get a good variety of demographics for your customers and potential customers. It also allows people to feel safe and more able to express their true feelings. These teleconferences should not be conducted by you, but by an independent party to avoid adding pressure to the situation.

We’ll transition a bit and talk about how to construct a word-of-mouth campaign. First, we’ll talk a look at the essential ingredients you need to put together a campaign. These ingredients are:

  • A superior product
  • A way of reaching key influencers in your marketplace
  • A cadre of experts willing to bat for you
  • A large number of enthusiastic consumers
  • A way of reaching the right prospects
  • One or more compelling stories that people will want to tell to illustrate your product’s superiority
  • A way to substantiate, prove, or back up your claims and how the product will work in the real world
  • A way for people to have direct, low-risk experience, a demo, sample, or free trial
  • A way of reducing overall risk, an ironclad guarantee

Once you have those ingredients ready to use, you should consider the situations in which your company can benefit from a strong word-of-mouth program. Some of these situations are:

  • When there are credibility problems
  • When there are breakthroughs
  • When there are marginal improvements
  • Where the product has to be tried in large numbers or over time
  • Where there is a high risk of trying the product
  • With older or mature products that have a new story that people tend to ignore
  • With unfair competitive practices such as spreading rumors, or telling lies about your product
  • When there are governmental or other restrictions on what you may say or claim directly

While most of the word-of-mouth tactics are favorable for your word-of-mouth program, there are a few products to avoid using in this program. They are:

  • Products where a seminar would not provide meaningful added value
  • Products that can’t be tried and where there is no consensus among experts
  • Products that are clearly inferior, without having a compensating superiority for similar products
  • Products that are so personal or emotional that rational discussion is irrelevant to the decision
  • Products where the decision value is so small (low price/low volume) the medium will not be cost-effective.

This wraps up this post on word-of-mouth research and how that research can be used when putting together your word-of-mouth campaign. If you need help with the research and a plan to use the results of that research, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need with our top-notch resources and tools.

Science of the Memes

Today I’d like to discuss the science of memes and how spreading ideas around and through society is ingrained in humans.

Memes

This refers to the types of ideas that spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. You can use this same information to create a lasting positive impression about your company, products and services. People are more likely to try a new product or service when they feel protected and reassured by the masses.

It’s been determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society. There are 5 main situations where this occurs. They are:

  1. Crisis
  2. Mission
  3. Problem
  4. Danger
  5. Opportunity

Think of evangelism. This is a prime example of people not only spreading the word but convincing people to jump on board and start to spread the word themselves. To do this effectively, you need to incorporate a few key things that always catch people’s eye:

  • News
  • Unique Results
  • The Unusual
  • Helping Others
  • Secrets

Next, we will switch gears a little and talk about viral marketing. While traditional marketing can be used to your advantage, the reality is viral and online marketing is the king of the castle. You can spread the word online like the plague if you know what to do. Here are some simple steps to do this:

  • Find an interesting idea
  • Make it easy for people to experience or trial
  • Spread the idea while people who are in close contact with others
  • Take advantage of existing communication methods
  • Develop the way of trying your product in such a way that it automatically draws more try-ers

Some great places to use viral marketing are:

  • Geocities
  • Amazon
  • Roger Wilco
  • YouTube
  • Facebook Messenger
  • Instagram Messenger
  • TikTok
  • Gmail
  • “Tell A Friend” Buttons
  • E-Greeting Cards

There are six things everyone should be doing to benefit from word of mouth on the Internet:

  • Put WOM components on your website.
  • Assign people to monitor your viral marketing.
  • Place testimonials in different places on your website to walk a customer through the purchasing cycle.
  • Set up an email marketing campaign.
  • Stay current on what products and services your industry experts recommend.
  • Use your website to demonstrate how people use or find success with your products and services.

This wraps up the lesson on traditional and viral marketing. If you need help putting together any plans or successes in this lesson, try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need to implement these plans.

Decoding WOM Messages

Today’s lesson will discuss how word-of-mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.

There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:

  • Expert to Expert
  • Expert to Peer
  • Peer to Peer

When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things to happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.

Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.

There is a standard word-of-mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up in only a few weeks. The standard system is:

  • First impressions from an expert
  • Organized trial of your products or services
  • Pooling peer experiences

It’s important to know exactly who advocates for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.

Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:

  • Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
  • Offer to videotape their testimonials
  • Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
  • Offer them a premier customer membership
  • Ask them to join a referral incentive program

You can offer your biggest fans many things to help spread the word about your products and services.

Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:

  • Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
  • Boring, lacking something fresh and new
  • Too short of a time slot to offer enough information

While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective, it needs to be presented in the right sequence, comes from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible and be delivered at the right time in the medium.

We’ll switch gears and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers. Still, it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.

Without these results, you can’t fine-tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat, lose potential customers, and waste a lot of money. Once consumers have the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process to analyze whether the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:

  • Direct experience with the product
  • Interaction with peers using the same product
  • Experts’ experience
  • Scientific journals and other resources
  • Independent reviews and opinions

You can accelerate this process by:

  • Providing your own demos and free trials
  • Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
  • Offer a good, true story that can be passed around

Once you have the ability and can work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this, try our FREE test drive to gain access to our experienced business coaches.

WOM Meets Customers Head-On

Today we’ll cover shortening your customers’ decision-making process with positive word of mouth. There are essentially 5 stages in the decision-making process.

They are:

  1. Give the product a chance and transition from a “no” to a “maybe”.
  2. Check out the options and investigate the different products available.
  3. Observe the product to check for potential benefits, features and operations to see if it fits their needs.
  4. Become a customer and purchase their first item. They will discriminate against their first product as they form their opinion of you.
  5. Purchase again and starts spreading positive word of mouth as an advocate of your products.

So, let’s take a closer look at each one of these.

From “No” to “Maybe”

This stage is important because if your potential customers don’t even take a second look at your products and services, you have no chance of sealing a deal. This is why you need to offer credible information and well-thought-out pricing, guarantees and incentives.

Investigating Your Products

At this stage, they are taking a closer look at your product line to see if there is anything that could benefit their life. This is where you need to ensure your hard information is right out there for the customers to see and compare.

Trial Period

Customers often feel more at ease and ready to purchase when a trial is in place. They usually want to try vicariously through someone else, so they don’t feel any risk involved. A good way to offer this is through demo videos, product demonstrations or a tour of your facilities. This stage may invoke a reaction of “I tried it and liked it. You should check it out.”

Make a Purchase

They have taken the risk of purchasing one of your products or services at this stage. They are now evaluating how easy, convenient, cost-effective and satisfying your product or service is. At this stage, a common reaction would be, “It was really easy to use and learn from. It’s really great, you should get it!”

Advocates for Your Products

At this last stage of decision making the customer is immensely pleased with your product and often keeps using it and/or comes back for more products and services. They are likely telling everyone they know how much they like it, that they use it every day and have already (or will be) back to your establishment for more.

We talked a minute ago about the different types of purchasers. Now we will take a closer look at their characteristics, so you can figure out which tactics are best to use at the right stage of the decision-making process.

The Innovator

  • Wants to stand out from the crowd
  • Know what’s hot and trendy
  • Likes “strange” or “weird” new products
  • Wants to be the first to try and will talk about it animatedly

Early Adopter

  • Driven by excellence
  • More concerned with possibilities than realities
  • Always looking to be a leader
  • Always looking for a new vision

Middle Majority

  • Wants to be perceived as competent
  • Concerned about practicality and easy comparisons
  • Needs an easy way out if not satisfied
  • Wants products that meet the industry standard

Late Majority

  • Generally skeptical and wants to know the risks upfront
  • Needs to shop around for the best deal
  • Needs a support system
  • Wants what everyone else has

Laggard

  • Needs it to be completely safe and traditional
  • Needs reassurance that nothing will go wrong
  • Won’t try new things unless it’s the last resort
  • Will search for loopholes and problems
  • Wants to use it in the standard industry way

As you can see, each type of consumer wants something a little different depending on their personality type. The key to successful word of mouth is targeting and catering to each consumer type. If you need help identifying the types of consumers you are currently helping and how to attract the types you are lacking, try our FREE test drive for the resources and tools you need to get the job done.

Next time we’ll talk about how word-of-mouth messages are delivered and what you can do to help facilitate that.

Harness the Power of Word-of-Mouth (WOM)

Today we’re going to talk about how to harness the power of word of mouth. Including the six-step process to success and the 30+ (that’s right, I said 30) ways to harness the power of WOM. So, let’s get started!

There are six steps to harnessing word of mouth:

  1. Understand your customers’ values and priorities; this will help you understand why they would buy your products.
  2. Understand the different adopter types: innovators, early adopters, middle majority, late adopters, and laggards.
  3. Identify which decision stages are needed for your product to be adopted.
  4. Use the information from steps 2 & 3 to determine which wording and word-of-mouth tactics will work using the Decision Maker Matrix (we’ll talk about this in a minute).
  5. Put together the resources for the highest word-of-mouth impact.
  6. Create and implement your word-of-mouth campaign.

The Decision Maker Matrix is based on years of trial and error by George Silverman. It essentially charts different concerns you may come across when working with different adopters and puts together a decision process for each one.

We are now going to move on to the 30+ ways to harness the power of WOM:

Use Experts

Experts can come in many forms and all their opinions should be considered when creating a WOM campaign. Some experts from whom you could gather information include:

  • Customers
  • Suppliers
  • Subject Matter Experts
  • Salespeople
  • Experts roundtables
  • Experts’ selling groups

Seminars, Workshops & Speeches

These venues are a perfect opportunity to gather information. People who attend these types of events are used to giving feedback, so you can use a survey or other methods to gather the information you can look over later. Some events to use are:

  • Speakers Program
  • Seminars
  • Webinars
  • Group selling
  • Dinner meetings
  • Peer selling groups
  • Video conference experts’ panels
  • Trade show events/opportunities

Referral Selling

As we’ve discussed before, a referral program can help with various things in building your business. Using some of the following tactics and opportunities, you can find exactly what you need to do to generate positive word of mouth. These tactics and opportunities are:

  • Testimonials
  • Networking
  • Referral Selling Program

“New” Media

The concept of “new” media is using up-and-coming media sources and opportunities to get the word out about your products and services and listen for feedback about them. Most social media options could be considered “newer” media:

  • Facebook, Facebook Groups, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook Live
  • TikTok
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • WhatsApp
  • A host of others

Using Traditional Media for Word of Mouth

Using traditional media is a great way to get feedback. These are still considered mainstream ways of interacting with the public and consumers. Some traditional media outlets are:

  • Customer service
  • PR
  • Placements
  • Events
  • Promotions
  • Word of mouth in ads, sales brochures, or direct mail
  • Salesperson programs, sales stars, or peer training,
  • Word-of-mouth incentive programs (“Tell-a-friend” programs)
  • Customer gifts they can share with their friends (articles, how-to manuals)

Internal Word of Mouth

  • Encourage employee word of mouth and sharing feedback with family, friends, and others
  • Offer rewards or commissions for word-of-mouth success

As you can see there are tons of ideas you can work with to increase your level of positive word-of-mouth marketing. If you need help with any of this, please try our FREE test drive to access our exclusive resources to help you put this whole thing together. And take advantage of our Holiday Special at bit.ly/CPAHoliday22!

Word of Mouth Tactics – Part 3

Last time we talked about the second part of word-of-mouth tactics which help you put together a system to help shorten the purchasing decision time of your customers, which can increase your profits immensely.

Today we’re going to talk about the nine levels of word of mouth, which gives you a tool to measure the word of mouth circulating around your company, products, and services. You can then see where you are getting negative or weak word of mouth and find ways to correct it.

So, launching into the nine levels of word of mouth should seem relatively obvious: the negative levels are, well, negative and the positive ones are positive.

Minus 4

This is the worst of the worst and means your product is creating a scandal. Remember, when the popular over-the-counter pain relievers, like Tylenol, were deemed unsafe? Yea, you won’t want that kind of word of mouth.

Minus 3

Disgruntled customers are going out of their way to convince other consumers from purchasing your products and services. They are boycotting you.

Minus 2

While not outwardly boycotting, when customers are asked about you, they will give a negative response.

Minus 1

At this level, people are mildly dissatisfied and while not outwardly talking about it, they will have an opinion if asked. Now they may purchase from you despite their negative feelings, this can be a little confusing.

Level 0

This is sort of a neutral place to be. Customers are using your products, but don’t really talk about it. People rarely ask them about it, so they aren’t sharing their opinion with others. This can be a bit of a slippery slope because you don’t want to turn that neutral experience into a negative one. In fact, you should work to make it a positive one.

Plus 1

At this level, we are finally starting to work our way into positive word of mouth about your company, products, and services. Plus 1 signifies that people are generally pleased with your products, but unless asked, don’t really say anything about them.

Plus 2

When asked, your customers will talk about how much they love your products.

Plus 3

Customers will go out of their way to talk about your products, services, company, and shopping experience with you. This is most evident when you see how people recommend movies to their friends and family.

Plus 4

Your product is the toast of the town. There is an obvious buzz going around and your business is the place to be. People are not only talking about your great products and services, but they are talking about their shopping experience, your customer service, and how they perceive the company to help them in the future.

Some great examples of Plus 4 companies are:

  • Lexus
  • Harley Davidson
  • Lululemon
  • Tesla
  • Apple
  • Costco

 

We’ll leave this lesson for you to mull over and look at what kind of word of mouth you are generating. If you need help with this process, try our FREE test drive to get help from our experienced business coaches.

Next time we’re going to talk about the 30 ways to harness the power of word of mouth.